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This might have been my favorite day of the Tour of Mont Blanc, even though we didn't do any hiking - it was our rest day in Courmayeur. The forecast called for rain today(a 50% chance of thunderstorms), which was disappointing, because the plan was to ride the cable cars and gondola of Mont Blanc and see all the beautiful peaks and glaciers. Our best bet was start early and hope to get some sightseeing done before the storm arrived. Melanie and I enjoyed a great breakfast buffet at le Grange, and then we met Stephen and James at the base of the cable car (they took a bus up from Courmayeur, while we just had to walk over.) The cable cars up to Helbronner are new and modern. They have glass windows surrounding the car. As you stand in the car, it spins slowly as it rises, so that by the time you arrive at the upper station, you have completed a 360 degree view. There happened to be a race on the day we took our cable car ride (it was a Saturday.) The runners began at the bottom of the mountain, and raced all the way to the cable car station at the top. It is quite steep - we could see the runners below us on the switchbacks as we rose up in our cable car. There were race-workers positioned along the trail at key points, I think they were meant to warn the runners of steep drops. At the halfway point of the race, the runners are required to put on hard hats - I guess there is significant danger of rocks dislodged by other racers bouncing down the steep mountainside! To get to the top actually requires two cable cars. The car dropped us off at Pavillion du Mont-Frety. We immediately went to the second car, and continued our ride all the way up to Punta Helbronner. At Helbronner, we boarded the gondolas for our 5 km ride over the ice sheet. The gondolas are an amazing ride, but they are also an impressive engineering feat. Because of the constantly shifting ice, the designers could not build any stanchions to support the cables. There is only one bare rock between Helbronner and Aiguille du Midi - one tower is built there, and for the rest of the ride, the cables are suspended above the ice. We rode in a four-person cab, a set of three of these cabs make up one gondola. This arrangement means that everyone gets a window seat. I have probably gone overboard with my use of superlatives to describe the gondola ride - how many times can I say magnificent, beautiful, awesome, tremendous? I have many photos included here, but they don't really give the sense of how immense the glacial ice looks, or how beautiful it looked. Fortunately, the gondola ride is a slow one, so there is plenty of time to admire the views. Also, there are twelve of the gondolas circulating around the cables, so we stopped each time one of the gondolas reached one of the stations (to allow passengers to load and unload.) I was surprised at how many hikers we saw out on the ice - there are tracks all over the ice sheet. Some of the tracks appeared to go quite close to the crevasses. We also saw climbers on the exposed rocks. I wonder if anyone was climbing Mont Blanc itself on that day. At Aiguille du Midi, we walked around admiring the views. We rode an elevator up to the top view platform - from here you can look in all directions. This is an especially great vantage point for looking up at Mont Blanc and for looking down at Chamonix. We could see places on the TMB that we had already hiked - such as les Houches, les Brévent and the Flégère cable car where we started. There is a small room built entirely out of glass that juts out from the view platform - so that when you look down through the glass, you see a drop hundreds of feet below you to the glaciers. Of course we got pictures of that! The elevator that brought us up this high vantage point broke, and apparently there is no emergency set of stairs (what happens if there is a fire??) We found ourselves stranded on top of Aiguille du Midi. And then the storm clouds came in, the first few drops of rain fell... would we blasted by the elements up there on the exposed top platform? The French repairmen managed to get one elevator repaired, so six people at a time were able to make their way down to the lower platforms. Apparently, the elevator had broken just after we reached the top, we were one of the last people in line. I counted how many people were in the line ahead of us while Stephen timed how long it took for the one elevator to make a round trip. We might have to wait another hour before we could leave! Fortunately, the weather didn't get any worse, the pace of the elevator picked up, and we returned to the lower platforms. We immediately went to the gondola station to ride back to Italy, but it was too late. Due to the bad weather, they had suspended the gondola service. Melanie and I went down to the other viewing platforms, looking at the Chamonix valley. It wasn't too much later that Stephen came hurrying over to tell us that the gondola had resumed service, and we should leave now. The trip back across the glaciers was just as fun as the first time. The bad weather held off, and our views were unobstructed. Soon we were back at Helbronner. There is a refugio built at the top of Helbronner: Rifugio Torino. We walked through a long tunnel to reach the refugio, but rather than go inside, we took a walk through the warning fence and took a brief sojourn out onto the Glacier du Geant. We only went a few hundred yards, following a well worn track through the snow that rested on top of the ice. If you choose, you can walk from here all the way to Aiguille du Midi. Apparently that is a common event, but there is a danger of crevasses and avalanches. While we were up on Aiguille du Midi, I thought I heard some avalanches, but I never saw anything fall. Perhaps it was just the glacial ice cracking as it moved. James and Stephen rode the cable cars back to Entreves, they wanted to catch a bus back to Courmayeur. Melanie and I spent more time taking in the views at Helbronner, and looking at the display of crystals that hikers had retrieved from various nearby peaks. After riding down to Pavillion du Mont-Frety, we got out and briefly explored their alpine garden. The weather was still good enough at this point that we could look to the east, up Val Ferret, and see Refugio Walter Bonatti. The rain picked up as we returned to Entreves. I was so glad that the weather had held off until the late afternoon, allowing us a full day to enjoy the scenery. We had been so fortunate with weather on this hike. Panorama Photos
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